to humble us all
by ilarual
Summary: "Stupid old man," he said, in a choked voice that told her he didn't mean it at all. "What the hell was he thinking?" "I don't know," she whispered. "I don't… I just don't understand." Post-Tartaros, canon divergence. Lucy and Laxus have a chance encounter that sets them both on a new path.


**A/N-** Ayyyyyy so I'm finally back to writing for Fairy Tail! Mashima's ending to the series was so unsatisfying and frankly downright insulting that I kinda ragequit the series for two whole years. But now that I've had some time to cool off... I'm back, bitches!

This is a oneshot... for now. I have a lot of ideas for this canon divergence and how I'd like to play it out, but I want to finish StBFL, as well as a very different post-Tartaros canon divergence before I give this idea any further attention, but this scene in particular would not leave me alone and since it was already written, it seemed a shame not to share it.

The title of the fic is from Drought by Vienna Teng (because what Laura fic is complete without at least one reference to Vienna Teng?) and the song is also definitely recommended listening for the story! The line "wrap life in the brilliance of death to humble us all" seemed... agonizingly appropriate for anything connected to Tartaros!

_Ten days after Tartaros..._

The streets of Magnolia were usually bustling and bright, but in recent days none of that charming commotion that had inspired Lucy so much when she first came to town was anywhere to be seen. Piles of cracked masonry littered the streets, and the canals were cloudy with ash from the violent destruction of the guildhall and Cardia Cathedral, but it wasn't all bad. The wreck of the Plutogrim could still be seen in the foothills to the west of town, a reminder of how much worse things might have been without the intervention of the mages of Fairy Tail.

Lucy walked through the rubble-strewn streets, and she did not look to the west.

She wasn't sure where she was wandering. She'd left her apartment with the vague idea of getting groceries, because she was down to crackers and peanut butter and no matter how little she wanted to leave the house, she knew she needed to eat more than that. The inside of her mouth was dry enough without a diet of mostly crackers. But when she got out into the street, she had somehow walked right past the grocer at the end of the lane and just kept going.

Her head felt like an echo chamber. Too much space, not enough thoughts to fill it. Her lips were cracked and dehydrated, prone to bleeding because she couldn't remember the last time she'd put balm on them. Somewhere distant inside her, she hated that she was falling apart. She hated that she didn't have the strength to fight this hateful apathy and devastating sadness that weighed on her. It wasn't like she was the only one who had lost something, after all. She was far from the only one who had been through hell when Tartaros upended all their lives.

But everyone else seemed to be managing it. They had all smiled their sad smiles and said their sad goodbyes and walked away with their heads held high.

Not right away, of course. Those like Macao or Alzack and Bisca who had settled homes in town still lingered in the streets of Magnolia, no doubt wondering how the hell they would pay their bills without a guild. But the younger members who lived in the guild's dormitories or in apartments around the city had seemed to simply vanish within days of Makarov disbanding the guild. A few, like Juvia and Elfman, left that same night, with the Master's pronouncement still ringing in the air. The rest had fled one by one over the next several days, a deluge of Fairites (_ex-Fairies_) flooding out across Fiore.

_No_, Lucy thought, kicking idly at a loose brick lying in the street, _not a flood or a torrent or anything half so powerful as that_. The mighty guild that only a month ago had reigned triumphant in the Grand Magic Games— that less than_ two weeks ago_ had been so full of fire and optimism as they raced out to avenge their fallen comrades— was reduced to a pathetic trickle of broken-down mages running off into the gutters of Fiore. They made their excuses, said their goodbyes, gave half-hearted promises to keep in touch, and then they were off.

And some of them hadn't even bothered to do that.

Lucy wasn't sure where Gray had gone. Before she'd left, Juvia had made some cryptic comments about traveling north, so Lucy assumed that she must have followed Gray, and if he was heading north, it was probably back to Isenberg. She wasn't sure why, or what had happened to drive him so far and so fast, but he'd simply vanished before the sun had risen. It was only Juvia's assurances that let them all know that he was still alive and not lying somewhere in the wreck of the Plutogrim. And as for Natsu…

Her fingernails dug hard into the palms of her hands. Thinking about that note, that awful excuse for a goodbye letter left in her apartment as if that was anywhere close to enough, made the dry hollowness in her chest _ache_. She shoved it away, forcing her mind to other matters, other people, _anything_, and she looked up to study her surroundings as a distraction.

To her horror, her wandering feet had brought her to the burnt-out remains of the guild hall.

She hadn't been there since Master Makarov had disbanded the guild. Just holed up at home all the last week. For the first couple of days she'd tried to be social, tried to meet up with people and help out fellow Fairies whose homes had been damaged during Tartaros's first assault on Magnolia. Gray and Natsu and Erza leaving one after the other had been hard, but the rest of her family had still been there, no matter what Master might have said. But then Cana had announced her intention to go track down Gildarts, and Levy had said she wanted to go to Era, to help with the cleanup efforts there. And once Wendy knocked on Lucy's door, bearing news that her friend Chelia had invited her to join Lamia Scale, that was it. She was done. She didn't have the strength to bear witness to the rest of her family crumbling away to ash any more than she'd had the strength to come and bear witness to the ruin of the hall itself.

But somehow she was here now, staring at the spilled guts of the building she had helped to build with her own hands.

The bomb Elfman had been forced to carry into the guild hall had certainly been effective, she reflected. The concussive force of the explosion had been so great it had reduced most of the stone and plaster in the building to little better than gravel, with only a few tiny segments of wall still standing. Anything flammable had been reduced to cinders, and as she stepped under the melted, mangled arch of the iron gateway that had marked the entrance to the property, her footsteps stirred little eddies in the piles of ashes.

Feeling as if her head were floating away from her shoulders, she took step after hesitant step down the walkway to where the front door would have been if the building still stood. A small portion of the stone archway marked where the tall curved doors had been, and as she passed under the half-arch, she tripped on the unseen granite threshold and fell to her knees in the dust.

Lucy didn't cry. She wasn't sure she had any tears left to shed. Every ounce of moisture in her body had been cried out after Natsu, after _Aquarius_, and she was left as dry as the ashes and shattered stones that were all that remained of the only true home she'd had since her mother died.

What on Earthland was she going to do?

She wasn't like Wendy. She couldn't just change guilds because her old one was… was _gone_. There was no doubt that if she wrote to Yukino or to Hibiki, one of the other guilds in Fiore would welcome her with open arms. But she wasn't made that way. Maybe there was some distant someday where she'd be able to consider taking work under another banner, stamping another guild-mark on her skin without even the thought of it making her feel physically ill, but right now she knew that wasn't a possibility.

Swallowing hard against the taste of bile, she dropped forward, her palms slamming onto the cracked flagstones. Chunks of rock and broken glass bit into her palms, but she was sure she didn't bleed. She was too dry to bleed. Dry as the dust, dry as the ashes that swirled around her.

Dry as a world without Aquarius.

Staring down at the fire-blackened stone, she took slow, deep breaths as she fought the nausea churning in her gut. She_ hated_ that she felt this helpless and lost. She'd been on her own before, after all. She'd traveled around by herself for the better part of a year after leaving her father's house. This was really no different, right?

But it was._ It was_. When she'd left the estate, she'd never known what it was like to have human friends. It had only been herself, Aquarius, Cancer, and the house staff for _years_. It was hard to miss what you'd never had. But once she'd joined Fairy Tail, once she'd gotten so accustomed not just to having friends but to having them around _constantly_…

Sweet gods, _how was she going to do this?_

"Lucy? Are you okay?"

The voice was startling, but she didn't react at first. She was too stunned to hear a familiar voice at all. Slowly she raised her head and turned to look at the man who approached her.

Laxus, she thought, looked awful. His skin had a pale, waxy cast to it, and there were deep, bruised-looking circles beneath his eyes. He was, for the first time she could remember, dressed down. The informal sweatpants and dark t-shirt were an odd look for the usually impeccably-dressed lightning mage. The effect rendered him frazzled and care-worn, and Lucy hated herself for taking a small amount of comfort in the fact that someone else looked as destroyed as she felt. There had been sadness in all of them after Tartaros, of course, but Laxus looked… he looked…

_Haunted_.

She forced herself up off her hands, but stayed kneeling in the dirt, perching back on her heels as she looked up at him. He was the first of her friends she'd seen in almost a week now, and although they weren't close, she was pathetically grateful that he was here, unexpected as it was. "Not particularly," she said tiredly. "I'm not _physically_ hurt, if that's what you mean."

"That makes one of us," he grunted.

She nodded. The way he moved was hesitant, and she suspected he was still in a fair bit of pain. "I'm surprised to see you out of the hospital so soon."

"Got bored. Couldn't stand staring at the ceiling anymore," he replied.

That didn't surprise her. Laxus might be calmer than most Fairies, but he was still an active person. It wasn't hard to imagine him being bored stiff lying in a hospital bed for days. The memory of sitting, patient and quiet, in an upstairs room at the estate and watching out the window as life happened to other people intruded upon her and she couldn't repress a shudder.

"I can't believe Porlyusica let you out," she said, to distract herself.

"She didn't. I staged a jailbreak."

The corners of his lips twitched just a little as he said it, and if it had been two weeks ago, Lucy would have laughed out loud. Two weeks ago, it would have been _funny_. As it was, the mental image of enormous Laxus trying to do _anything_ stealthily was just about enough to bring a wan smile to her lips.

"Sounds risky," she observed, trying for wry but not quite making it there.

"Yeah, risking getting whacked with a broom." He rolled his eyes. "I'm shaking in my boots over that."

He sat down on what remained of the guild's outer wall as he said it. Given how pale he looked, Lucy wondered if it was as casual as it seemed, or if it was because his legs wouldn't hold him up anymore. Like hers, except he had an actual medical reason to be shaky on his feet, whereas she was just… a mess.

"How are Freed and the others?" she asked. "Did they help with the big breakout?"

He shrugged. "The old lady let 'em leave a couple days back. They weren't as bad off so she tried to send 'em home."

"Tried?"

Laxus gave her another of those not-quite-smiles. "They kept sneaking in after visiting hours."

"They were worried about you," Lucy said fondly. Then, more quietly, she added, "We all were."

It wasn't an exaggeration. The memory of half the guild crowding into the infirmary and the rest standing as close as possible outside the doors, watching as Laxus and the Thunder Legion struggled to breathe, would be branded into her memory forever. They had gone to war for their fallen friends, a war of vengeance that had turned so quickly into a war for survival…

Lucy shook herself mentally, trying to keep from falling back into the horror of Tartaros. Trying not to dwell…

It seemed she wasn't the only one. Laxus's brow was creased, a dour look in his eyes. That haunted look was back in his eyes. The same look she'd seen in the dragon slayers' faces after their final conversations with their parents. The same look she saw in the mirror each day. She wondered what ghosts Laxus was carrying with him.

She didn't ask, though. She wasn't sure she would be able to handle the answer.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked.

If she had the words to articulate that, she would have told him, but she didn't. "What are _you_ doing here?" she replied instead.

"Probably the same as you," he said simply.

She couldn't find fault with that answer.

The silence hanging over them stretched out, taut like a piano string. Lucy didn't know what to say, didn't know what she_ could _say in the face of what had happened, and it didn't seem like Laxus had any idea either. She couldn't find it in herself even to stand up and sit next to him on the broken wall, so she just stayed there, picking at a frayed thread in the hem of her shorts and struggling to find words.

And so they just sat there, two lost Fairies, in the ashes of a building that had once been home and refuge to their makeshift family.

Finally, Laxus spoke. "The old man was gone by the time I woke up," he said quietly. "Ever and the guys said they had no idea where he went." It was phrased like a statement, but the way he spoke, it sounded like a question.

Lucy's throat was bone dry. She nodded. "After—" She cleared her throat, to no avail. "After Master announced the disbandment, he left Magnolia. He didn't tell anyone where he was going."

"Damn," he muttered, eyes closing for a moment as if in pain.

"And… and everyone else has gone," she said. "I don't know if your team said, but Erza and Cana and just… just _everyone_, they've all left. Or, well, not quite everyone. Macao's still in Magnolia, of course, because Romeo's still got school, not that his attendance record has ever been great. And Wakaba and his family, they've lived in Magnolia for three generations now anyway so he'll probably stay even if the guild is... and Max is still in town, but he's talking about moving back to Clover Town to be closer to his siblings so who knows how long that'll last. Oh, and Alzack and Bisca… I have no idea what they're going to do. They'd only just started to get out of debt with better jobs coming in after the Games, and now they're out of work…" She closed her eyes because she couldn't seem to close her mouth. "And everyone else has just _scattered_. Half of them were gone almost before Master Makarov."

There it was again, that feeling that she needed to cry, but despite the urge, her tear ducts simply refused to produce a drop of moisture. With her throat feeling tight and sore, she finally managed to stop talking, stop rubbing salt in both their wounds.

"Gods fucking _dammit_," Laxus hissed.

She opened her eyes and found that he was hunched over, hands braced on his knees, glaring at the ground with over-bright eyes as if he couldn't bear to make eye contact any more than she could.

"Stupid old man," he said, in a choked voice that told her he didn't mean it at all. "What the hell was he _thinking_?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't… I just don't understand."

Laxus looked even paler than he had when he first arrived, and his hands were clenched so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. "This is so fucked." His voice wasn't much more than a whisper. "Right after something like— _this is so fucked._"

"Why didn't anyone fight for it?" she wondered. It was the question that had been hounding her since Erza came to her and told her she was leaving town. And voicing it aloud for the first time opened up the floodgates on everything she'd been trying to avoid. Terrible, cold depression was swept aside by a sudden wave of helpless anger. "Why didn't anyone put their foot down and _insist_?"

He let out a bark of humorless laughter that scraped at the hollow place in her chest. "You think anybody can just _insist_ on anything with that old geezer?"

"You did," she pointed out.

One golden eyebrow raised skeptically, as if to say '_and look at how that turned out_.' What he said, however, was: "Not so much. I've been trying to match wills with Gramps since I was a teenager, and I've never once managed to out-stubborn him. Once he makes his mind up, there's no changing it."

Lucy slammed a frustrated fist down on the shattered flagstones. "Well _forget_ him, then! He doesn't own Fairy Tail! Why does he get to just… just take it away from all of us?" Finally,_ finally_ she got to her feet, the fury that had been burning slow behind her sadness flaring up white-hot and driving her to stand as she gave voice at last to everything that had been aching in her heart for the last week. "Master or no, that's not his right! Fairy Tail is more than just a guild! It's supposed to mean more to us than just a place to work, so _why didn't anyone fight for it?_ Why didn't anyone just say no? Why didn't anyone try to keep everyone together no matter what he says? Why didn't anyone say '_forget this, we're not following this command?_'"

She finally ran out of breath, out of words, out of anger.

Laxus was staring at her with wide eyes. "I think," he said softly, "you just did."

"What?"

The set of his mouth was quizzical as he looked at her, head tilted ever so slightly. "When I was reinstated, I swore I'd trust the old man to know what was best. Whether he tells anyone else what he's thinking or not, he's always had good reasons for everything he does. But this…" He shook his head. "No matter what the reason is, it's not good enough to justify tearing apart our family. This is an order I can't follow."

"What are you saying?" she asked softly. A feeling like rain was building in her chest, and it scared her. She was terrified she would get her hopes up only to realize that all she'd seen was heat lightning with no storm behind it. "Are you saying you'll rebuild the guild?"

His eyes widened. "Me?"

"Yes, isn't that what you mean with all that _'this is an order I can't follow'_ stuff?"

"You're the one who said it!" he replied. "I'm _agreeing_ with you."

"But—"

Laxus shook his head. "No, look, I can't… I can't be the one. I forfeited that option a long time ago and we both know that."

Lucy opened her mouth to insist, to tell him that after what he'd done for them on Tenrou, after what he'd done for the citizens of Onibus in trying to save them from Tempester's curse, there wasn't a mage in Fairy Tail who wouldn't follow where he led, but Laxus held up a hand to forestall her.

"I don't deserve the honor," he said firmly. "But Lucy… if you want to reform the guild, I'll do whatever I can to help you."

Maybe it shouldn't have been a particularly inspiring promise, coming from a man who looked like he could be knocked over by a good stiff breeze, but it felt like snowmelt to the barren riverbed of her heart.

"Me?" she breathed.

He gave her a look that was very nearly droll, but for the shocking confidence behind his eyes. "How do you feel about being the Seventh Master of Fairy Tail, Lucy?" he asked.

To her astonishment, she found that glorious tears were finally running down her cheeks, and Lucy realized the drought was over.

A/N pt 2- If/when I continue this canon divergence, it WILL BE posted as a separate fic, as I want to let this stand as a oneshot since it's not quite my usual prose style and I don't think I'd want to write an entire multi-chap in the same "mood!"

Thank you for reading!


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